Vegas Style
By Eric Smith-- On Dave Hickey—Air Guitar
While I maintain that there is a considerable amount of dialog to expound upon throughout Dave Hickey’s varying essays in Air Guitar, I couldn’t escape the fact that he talks so highly of Las Vegas as upholding the real freedom of America. It just so happens that my girlfriend and I are flying out of Seattle this coming Friday to celebrate her birthday “Vegas-Style,” which translates to an excess of hedonistic behavior that borders on self-destructive. But why? I couldn’t quite place the reasoning for such desire to travel to Las Vegas with all its illusion and filth and superficiality, and then Hickey made it clear for me in beautifully accurate prose. Hickey states:
“America…is a very poor lens through which to view Las Vegas, while Las Vegas is a wonderful lens through which to view America. What is hidden elsewhere exists here in quotidian visibility. So when you fly out of Las Vegas to, say, Milwaukee, the absences imposed by repression are like holes in your vision. They become breathtakingly perceptible, and, as a consequence, there is no better place than Las Vegas for a traveler to feel at home (23).”
Indeed, thinking about the behaviors that patrons of the wild city of Las Vegas exibite on a daily basis provides a bizarre sense of bewilderment at the spectacle in focus (or slightly out of it!), and this wild setting provides a lens for which to analyze how people might act should little social restraint dictate their behaviors. This is exactly why we are traveling to Vegas, to escape the banality of our current local environment, where should we stumble out the bar oblivious to the drink still in hand, we should avoid possible arrest. Vegas is still the Wild West but it is also, as I agree with Hickey, the most free and non-oppressive environment in the United States. No where else, aside from maybe New Orleans during Mardi gras, can one view such a spectacle of human ingenuity mixed with feral indulgence…And at little cost to one’s freedom. Where else does one find a young Mexican boy handing out escort magazines next to hotel gambling establishments, which I might add, provide a real chance of getting rich quick, all the while having your senses overloaded with mind rearing sounds and visuals? Vegas is a gigantic consumer-catered art installation and the participants are quite aware of it. The spectacle of human indulgence, fashion, and performance mixes up our idea of American culture, as it is a Mecca for all shapes and sizes to temporarily disconnect from the oppressiveness and predictability of our real homes. We are all trapped in false little utopias that have little to do with individual freedom. We cut our hair to fit corporate guidelines, invest our time in sorting junk mail, buy shit we don’t really need, talk politely to rude customers, all the while feeling somehow repressed by all the “quotidian” chores we must complete to satisfy a culturally prescribed image of normality. Las Vegas shatters the myth that Americans are well-behaved citizens enjoying normality, and it caters to all aspects of vice and extravagance in the freest way possible…yet the price tag is never attached to the experience. For Vegas is the hyper-reality of the American experience, and after 3 days in Vegas, I am ready to come home to my oppressive little abode nestled in the confines of marginal freedom…for my own good!
